Sunday Explanatory Notes: Romans 1:1-15

My current intention is to post selected explanatory notes on Sundays and Wednesdays in relation to the two upper level Bible classes I am teaching this semester. For Tuesday, here are some comments in relation to Romans 1:1-15.

I can't aim to be complete--too much burying me. [comment on contract Ways Never Parted removed]

So much of this section I have just translated without comment. Please pardon occasional notes indicating blanks I would want to fill in if I ever published these notes.
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1:1 Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called [to be an] apostle, separated for the gospel of God,
The Pauline authorship of Romans is not questioned. No cowriter is mentioned, although one Tertius mentions himself in 16:22 as the writer of at least that chapter.

***

Verse 3 will make it clear that the primary content of the "good news" relates to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised king and Lord.

1:2 ... which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures,
The early Christians scoured the Old Testament looking for explanations and information relative to the kind of messiahship that Jesus turned out to have. They were not, after all, expecting the Messiah to die on a cross! Nor is it clear that they were expecting Jesus to come back from the dead. Very early on we can imagine that they found the host of passages in the Old Testament that they now understood to be prophecies about Jesus and the manner of his messiahship.

What were some of these passages? Psalm 110:1, Psalm 22, ***

1:3 ... concerning His Son, who came from the seed of David, according to the flesh,
It is here that Paul makes clear what the content of the gospel is. It is the good news about the Son of God, the promised king. A "gospel" in the Roman world was an announcement of extraordinarily good news, such as the birth of a successor to the throne or a key victory against the enemies of the Romans. The good news of God is that "our God reigns" and that He reigns through the kingship of Jesus Christ.

Verse 3 gives the human part of the resume of the Son of God. In terms of the Old Testament, the Messiah would be a descendant of David, in the royal line. It is, after all, the promise of a continued Davidic king that serves as the ultimate basis for Jewish messianic expectation in the first place. 2 Samuel 7:14 tells of God saying to David about Solomon: "I will be his Father; and he will be my son... ***.

Old Testament passages such as these (e.g., Ps. 2; perhaps even Isa. 12:1; 10*) looked to a human successor to David's throne, a descendant of David "according to the flesh." It is thus no surprise that there were other individuals in this period who either tauted themselves or were promoted as the Messiah. The New Testament understanding of the Messiah is thus a significant upgrade from what we might consider the average Jewish expectation of the time.

1:4 ... [and] was appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, on the basis of his resurrection from the dead,
These two verses have a symmetry to them, and they stand somewhat loosely to the flow of Paul's thought. They are introduced with a characteristic "who" and have somewhat unique phraseology for Paul, like "Spirit of holiness" instead of "Holy Spirit." For this reason, a good number of scholars suggest that Paul is quoting a common Christian expression of faith here, rather than simply writing his own words.

This second half of the "creed," or whatever it might have been, points to a much greater understanding of Jesus than other messianic expectation. "According to the flesh," Jesus had the qualifications to be Messiah because he was of the line of David. But the actual "appointment" of Jesus to divine Sonship--at least "in power"--was at the point of his resurrection. This timing fits with a host of other New Testament passages that most meaningfully identify Jesus as the Son of God and Lord at the point of his resurrection (e.g., Acts 2:35; 13:33; Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:9-11; Heb. 1:5). In particular, they present Christ's exaltation to God's right hand as a kind of enthronement as cosmic king over all the creation.

... Jesus Christ, our Lord,
The person about which all these things apply is none other than Jesus, a man who had only recently walked the earth, an astounding claim. This Jesus is Christ, Messiah, king of Israel. And he is "our Lord," a term that occasionally has overtones of YHWH in the Old Testament for Paul.

1:5 ... through whom we have received grace and apostleship, leading to the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles in relation to his name,
As Paul will say in Romans 15*, he did not see himself as apostle to Jew and Gentile equally. He is the apostle to the Gentiles, sent with a commission by God to bring them the good news of the reign of God in Christ. The one "funding" his mission is none other than Jesus the Lord, who has graced Paul to go on this ambassadorial journey.

The desired outcome of the mission is the obedience of the Gentiles, an affirmation of the name of Jesus as the king. Faith here seems to be closely related to obedience. Faith is virtually equated with obedience to the gospel.

1:6 ... among whom you are also called by Jesus Christ,
The implication of this statement would thus seem to be that the audience is primarily Gentile in composition. The audience is among all the Gentiles whose faith in his lordship Jesus is seeking. The strongest argument for a "mixed" audience of both Jew and Gentile is Romans 16, which includes several Jews. However, the text of Romans itself points toward a predominantly Gentile audience.

1:7 ... to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called [as] holy ones,
This is the second part of the opening "prescript." The opening of an ancient letter was usually quite brief: X to Y, greetings. Paul uncharacteristically expands his prescripts will all sorts of qualifying statements and expressions.

So this is the "to Y" part of the prescript. *** placing of Romans in Paul's ministry

... grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the "greetings" part. *** Paul's typical greeting.

1:8 First, I am giving thanks to my God through Jesus Christ about you all, because your faith is being reported in the whole world.
Following the prescript of an ancient letter, there was characteristically a "thanksgiving" section where the author gave thanks to some god. Paul's letters also characteristically either give thanks to God or launch into a blessing of God after the prescript, with the notable exception of Galatians. The thanksgiving of Romans seems to run from verse 8 to 15.

When was the church founded, Claudius and AD49, death of Nero, AD54 ***

1:9-10 For God is my witness--whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel about His Son, as I constantly am making mention of you--[that I am] always in my prayers asking if somehow at last I will find good passage in the will of God to come to you.

1:11-12 For I long to see you that I might impart some spiritual gift to you so that you might be strengthened. And this is for the mutual encouragement among you through the faith in one another, both your [faith] and mine.

1:13 Now I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, that I have often purposed to come to you, and I was hindered until the present time,
It is interesting to see that Paul had hoped to visit Rome sooner than he did. We can wonder when and what sorts of things hindered him. ***

... so that I might have some fruit among you, just as [I have] also [had] among the other Gentiles.
Here is yet another indication that the audience is predominantly Gentile or at least that it is the Gentile Christian constituency at Rome to which Paul is predominantly writing. We must thus be very careful to hear Romans in this way, as a letter directed primarily at Gentiles. It is all too easy--even for scholars--to take their eye off reading Romans inductively to inserting all kinds of extraneous presuppositions into their reading of a biblical text.

1:14 Both to Greeks and barbarians, both to the wise and the ignorant, I am a debtor,
Again, we notice that Paul does not divide his mission up into Jews and Gentiles here but into types of Gentiles: civilized and uncivilized. ***

1:15 ... so my purpose is also to proclaim the gospel to you who are at Rome.
Again, Paul includes the audience within the stream of Gentiles that he has been discussing in the thanksgiving section of Romans. With this verse, we might say that the thanksgiving section comes to an end.